HCG diet? This does not look good.

I have a friend who just started the HCG diet and after looking at the suggested food plan that came along with it, it does not seem healthy at all.

- Does anyone know someone who has gone through the entire 40 days? - I am sure they lost weight, but did they keep it off? - Were there any negative side effects?

I do not see how it is possible to survive on a 500 calorie-per-day diet and then not gain all the weight back when you start eating normally (although hopefully more healthfully) after you finish. People would just lose weight with a 500 calorie diet alone without HCG because they are completely starving themselves.

I am just concerned that he is getting into something that is not good for his body.

My parents went on the HCG diet, despite my objections. Thier first 20 lbs fell off in a week and a half, after that their progress plateaued, im not sure if they lost it because of the HCG or just not eating

anyway they were tired all the time, and they said their kidneys started to hurt so they went off of it. The hormone is supposed to alter the brain, making it lock the high metabolism or something, they gained it back howeve

It is not that bad. I did a 25 day cycle and lost 27.5 pounds.It is literally a pound a day however, about 6-10 days into it you are not hungry and it really works.my sister did the 40 day and lost 37.5lbs (she chose the sublingual route)I got a script and I did the injectionsI will be the first to admit the 500 cal a day is hard but I now go back on it once or twice a year and do 750-1000 cal a dayjust adding an extra chicken breast/applesit shreds you up.

I did the real HCG diet, where you take daily injections of HCG and vitamins monitored by a doctor. There are a lot of over the counter versions where you take HCG sublingually, but i doubt the HCG gets into your system that way.

I did two rounds of the diet and lost 40 pounds the first time and 30 pounds the second time for a total of 70 pounds. I have kept it off for three years, and gained a lot of muscle since then. I weighed 175 when I finished. I weight 185 now with much more muscle.

The thing the HCG does is keep your body burning fat and not burning muscle which a low calorie diet normally would do. I'm sure I lost some muscle with the diet, but I didn't lose as much as I would have without the HCG. You are not supposed to exercise while doing the diet because you might use up your muscle.

I did my own modification of the diet where I did about 600 calories, with the other 100 calories pure protein. And I did some light exercise every day. I felt the light exercise really helped keep my hunger at bay (a short walk, or 10 minutes on my rowing machine, or 15 laps in the pool).

The key part off the diet is that when you end it, you add back food gradually. Only about 200 calories more the first week, and then 200 calories more the second week. This way you keep your body from rebounding and gaining fat. I think a lot of people don't have the discipline to do that after a severe diet. I really do feel like it reset my metabolism and my eating has been better since then.

The first few days of the diet were devastating to me. I could do nothing more than lie on the couch and drool. It was even an effort to change the TV channel. My brain pretty much shut down from the lack of calories, I couldn't have worked then. After 4 days it became bearable. After two weeks, I was mostly perfectly fine, and well adjusted with enough energy to get through the day.

It's something that seems to be catching on quickly. Folks here in Atlanta are doing it like crazy and they feel safe because they are being monitored by a "doctor". I don't know enough about it but it sounds like you're tricking your body into thinking its getting all of the daily nutrients but with a severe caloric deficit.

I was at a point in my life and health that I was ready to do a diet. I had some major health issues resolved that allowed me to lose weight, and I had started regular exercise. I was primed and ready for this diet.

I knew four people that lost significant weight with this diet (only one has kept it off, and he is a big exerciser).

So this was the one I chose. It worked for me, but I was able to follow it closely. There was something about the fact that the diet required you to do your own cooking, and the dishes were pretty unique, so I did not cheat. I tend to get monofocused on things. and this fit my personality well.

You go through a period where you stay dieting for a week after you stop the HCG, and then slowly ramp up your food over a period of weeks. I could tell the day I was off the HCG, b vitamins and an appetite suppressing hormone that was part of this injection. I was suddenly very hungry and felt weaker. Recovery from exercise was harsher. Even when I started adding more calories to my diet, I was still more hungry than when on the injections. So something in that injection really did help with the starvation aspect of the diet, and I don't think I could have hacked the hunger without it. I also think that I didn't lose much muscle weight during the process, even though I was on the diet for 40 days the first time and 25 days the second time.

Would I have lost weight with another diet? Probably. But this one did work with my personality and motivation to get the weight off quickly. And I have kept it off and my health and fitness have grown by leaps and bounds since then. So I am grateful to it. Yes, it's turned into a fad diet since I did it years ago, but every diet is a fad diet at some point.

I have one of those bodies that needs a real shock to lose weight, just trimming/tweaking things here and there and exercising more never really works for me.

The food in the diet was really close to the paleolithic diet, but without the fat.